Memoirs of a Fox
by Atomic Rex
Summary: Let's see... maintenance worker duties. Empty out the trashcans, clean the floors, wipe the tables clean, interview old animatronic foxes... Wait, what? Rated T for one scene in particular, but it's nothing too distressing. Please review.
1. Meet Foxy

Foxy rocked back and forth slowly in an irregular pattern. When he came forward, his knees bent slightly, making it seem that he might fall down at any moment. I instinctively backed away, and to my surprise, Foxy seemed to notice.

His head jerked up unnaturally fast. His loose jaw came slightly unhinged, causing him to look very surprised, which might have been comical had I not been being stalked by him for almost thirty minutes. He lifted up an arm with a sharp metal hook at the end, and used it to close his malfunctioning jaw. Now he looked less silly than before, but much more menacing. I could feel his sharp, yellow eyes burning into mine like daggers; he was watching my every move very closely.

I took another step back, and he took another step forwards. His mutilated body creaked loudly every time he moved, and his jaw seemed to be slowly sliding down again. My heart was racing, I couldn't remember being this scared at any other point in my life. Another step back, and I'd run into the wall. I had to do something else, something that wouldn't hurt Foxy, but would encourage him to leave me alone and go back to Pirate's Cove where he belonged. He had to be there by 6 AM sharp, or else I'd get slapped with a huge fine for "tampering with the animatronics." What a joke. In just a few more days, this disgusting restaurant would be completely empty. What did it even matter to them if I destroyed one of their creaky old robots?

Then I remembered what I'd been helping with all week. He must have finally gotten a buyer on Craigslist or eBay. That was why Bonnie, Chica and Freddy were taken out of the restaurant so early, someone bought them for a ridiculous amount of money online, and judging by the amount of time it took to get those animatronics ready to ship, the manager probably just didn't have the chance to get to Foxy until much later. Go figure. In my mind, he would have definitely been the first one to go.

But no. There I was, staring down a partially decomposed robotic fox. A fox that looked ready to maul me if I hesitated any longer. I had to try something.

"Uh, I'm sorry Foxy... y-you have to go back behind your curtain. The restaurant is closed forever now. You'll be taken somewhere a lot nicer in the morning. Maybe a museum, or someone's garage. Just please Foxy. Please don't hurt me," at this point I could barely even breathe. My strange belief that the fox could even understand English was foolish at best, insanity at worst. Or it was just the result of completely frazzled nerves.

My only response was a little flicker from Foxy's freakish yellow eyes. I waited around for a minute or two, but Foxy remained perfectly still, just like a normal animatronic does when it's shut off. Apparently his motor was dead. Even the bright glow of his eyes was dimming. I was incredibly relieved.

But since Foxy had apparently shut down, that meant that I now had the task of picking him up and putting him back where he belonged. Being a burly guy, this was no trouble at all, and despite looking really heavy, Foxy was pretty light. Probably the result of being broken and tattered.

I grabbed him by the waist, then lifted him off the ground. Predictably, his jaw came unhinged again. I made careful note of his sharp-looking teeth that kept swinging my way as his head moved back and forth with every step I took.

Normally, moving through the dining room was a challenge because of how cluttered it was. Long tables and a multitude of colorful chairs were scattered all over the place earlier in the week, but now, it was completely empty; save for the big stage in the corner of a room and a mural on the opposite side, with an arrow that read "Pirate's Cove" and pointed towards a long, dark hallway. Traveling these desolate halls used to be terrifying at night, but after they took away Freddy and his bandmates, the lights stay on much, much longer now, so no more tripping over wires or boxes in the dark anymore.

After a short walk, I had arrived at my destination, Pirate's Cove. I set Foxy down beside me and pulled back the curtain. There used to be a fake island set in there. It was nothing fancy, just a bit of sand, a palm tree and a treasure chest that contained plastic gold coins and jewels which were glued in to prevent theft. Now, all that's left is the faded purple curtain. It always struck me as an odd decorative choice. I know it was a part of the theming, but purple curtains and stars didn't remind me of piracy, maybe a tacky strip club, if anything.

I chucked a bit as I hoisted Foxy up onto his stage, the thought of him poledancing at a kid's birthday was utterly hilarious. I carefully positioned him in his default stance, with his hook raised up in the air, his jaw shut and his eyepatch on.

As I stood before him, I realized that I kinda felt bad for the guy. All decrepit and falling apart. Left alone in a remote area of the restaurant that no one was even allowed to go near.

Maybe I really was turning insane, but for whatever reason, I spoke to Foxy again. This time, with sympathy in my voice, rather than fear.

"I hope you get sent to a better place, Foxy. You really deserved better than this."

I sighed and shut the curtain. I was a little upset. Mostly at myself for talking to a robotic fox who wasn't even alive, but also at the company. The sorry state of the Foxy animatronic was their fault entirely. If they just weren't so damn cheap, then he would have been fixed years ago, or at the very least put out of his misery.

I know, I was crazy for talking to an animatronic fox, but damn, it was just so sad to look at what he had become. I had a vague recollection of having a few parties there when I was a kid, and Foxy was the most popular animatronic by far, but somewhere along the the line, something happened. They closed off his area and just left him there, for what I could only see as no reason at all.

I adjusted my hat and turned around. Before I could even take a single step, I heard a voice. A deep, crackly voice that sounded like a stereotypical pirate speaking through a drive-through speaker. It was a somber voice. Immediately, I realized who it belonged to, and who it was addressing. My insides froze up, and a chill ran down my spine.

"Yarr, me too, matey..."

I was too afraid to turn around. Foxy had gained conciousness again, and possibly even sentience. My throat had gone so dry, so even if I wanted to scream I wouldn't have been able to. A minute or so passed, and the voice spoke again.

"It's alright, matey. Foxy won't hurt ye."

I closed my eyes tight and spun around. If I was dreaming, I would know when I reopened them. I eased my eyelids open, and to my horror, I wasn't laying in bed, I was staring at Foxy again, and he was staring back, his head poking through the curtains. His eyes were lit up, and his jaw was dangling down off its hinges like before. His eyepatch lifted up, and I noticed him extending a single metal leg from the shadows, which he gently placed on the ground. The other one followed suit, and soon Foxy had climbed off his stage yet again, but I was too scared of him to be annoyed. I always knew that the animatronics were weird, but not _that _weird. Not weird enough to fully comprehend the English language!

I turned around and started to run, I would probably get fired if Foxy wasn't back in Pirate Cove when 6 AM finally came, but I didn't care. All I knew was I needed to find a way out of there, and fast. Either I was hallucinating, or the fox really was alive. Just before I could round the corner and make my way back into the dining area, I tripped over a thick, black cable that was strewn across the floor. Of course, that always happens, doesn't it?

I scrambled to get back on my feet, but I felt something pulling me back. I looked behind me and saw Foxy again, his hook snagged on the cuff of my jeans. For as weak as he looked, Foxy was surprisingly strong. I pulled and pulled, but it was no use. The fox had me. I gave up and let him drag me back into Pirate's Cove. Maybe, if I saved my energy, I could run back and actually pay attention to where I was running this time, instead of tripping over a stupid power cable.

Foxy let go of me once I was in front of Pirate's Cove again, and I heard his chilling robotic voice speak to me with the same somber tone, "There's no need to be runnin' away lad. I told ye I'm not going to hurt ye, and I meant it. I feel no desire to fix you."

Fix me? I unsteadily raised myself up again, this time I might as well hang around a bit and wait to see what the fox wanted.

"Foxy... How are you understanding me?"

"I may be made of metal and fabric, but me ears work just as well as yours matey. Over the years I've learned to understand what you fleshbags call "English," it's not that hard once ye hear it every single day."

Made sense to me. "So, why are you talking to me all of a sudden Foxy?"

"I've known you since ya' were a just a wee lad. Tell me, what's your name, sailor?"

"Daniel... M-my name is Daniel," I somehow managed to squeak out.

"Ah, that's right!" Foxy lifted up his hook for emphasis, "Summer of '85. You were turnin' 11 weren't ya, lad? Got to see me and my friends walkin' around before they bolted 'em to the floor and keelhauled me back into the shadows fer good."

Memories flooded my head. Somehow, Foxy remembered that I'd had my 11th birthday at Freddy's. I remembered him and the band getting off the stage to interact with me and my friends. But, for the life of me I couldn't remember why they stopped doing it. Attendance dropped after my 12th birthday for some reason, and I also had no memory of seeing Foxy after that. I was tempted to ask the animatronic a question about it, but the fear was still in the back of my head.

Foxy's jaw became more unhinged, and he fixed it with his hook again. He gazed upwards at the shiny paper stars dangling from a the ceiling, the same way that a kitten stares at string. Was he taking one good look at his surroundings again before he was evicted? Foxy turned his attention towards me again, and started playing with his hook with his other hand, twirling it around nonchalantly, as if expecting me to say something to him.

"Ya know, believe it or not, this hook's a lot sturdier than this here robot hand. Nearly lost me metal fingers a coupla' times after they stopped fixin' me. After the... accident," Foxy closed his jaw yet again and looked away. It was as if he regretted mentioning it now.

"Wha-what accident was that, F-foxy?" I was beginning to stutter again. Accidents are never good things, and judging by the condition poor Foxy was in right now, it'd have to have been something really, really bad.

Foxy cocked his head a little. His eyes flickered again. Was I being impolite by asking about it?

"Ya alright, lad? Perhaps you'd like to sit down, eh? I'll be right back."

Foxy turned around and slowly walked behind his stage. He rummaged around a bit, and came out holding a metal folding chair in his hook.

"Mind giving this old fox a hand?

Of course I came over and helped him unfold it. When a creepy robot fox with a hook for a hand and a mouth full of teeth tells you to do something, you don't say no.

"There ya go, have a seat Danny. I know me appearance can be intimidatin', but just as long as you sit and listen to me old tales, I'll let you live. They took out all the empty suits anyway. Nothin's here anymore 'cept me, you and that folding chair."

"I'm sorry Foxy. If it was me, I would have fixed you a long time ago. Surely the accident couldn't have been that bad, could it?"

"Ah, it ain't yer fault matey, tis mine. I'm the one that ruined the restaurant. That's why Freddy hates me, and that's why we stopped comin' off the stages during the day. I hurt someone by accident."

"What did you do exactly?"

"It was in November of 1987. A girl and her family were celebratin' her birthday. Everything was going great, I even got their dad to dance with me. And then... I don't know. I just broke. I fell forward. Cut the man's head wide open. Took out a piece of brain. The girls were shocked, everyone was. They hauled me backstage and got the blood and brain out of me mouth. Then they just left me there for days. At night Freddy, Bonnie and Chica would bang on the door and scream at me. I just wanted to turn off and die."

"You... cut his head open? A-are you sure it was just an accident?" I scooted my chair back a few inches. Suddenly the decision to get rid of floor characters made perfect sense.

"Yes, matey! The company wasn't takin' good care of old Foxy at the time. Eventually, they pulled me out again. Had to go in a big courtroom and get hit with foam baseball bats, and get mercilessly beaten by one metal one. Of course, the whole "not falling down no matter what" mechanism only works when it's maintained. When I bit the man it wasn't, but before I went to court it suddenly was. Stinkin' bilge rat owners. They dumped me and left me to rot back here like I'm scrap metal. But I'm okay now. Just wanted to talk with someone before they ship me off to wherever."

"Well..." I glance at the clock on the wall: 1:16 AM. "I've got time. Can you tell me some more about your life at Freddy's?"

"Aye. But me life didn't start here, I've been in other places before. Get comfortable Danny, this is gonna' be a long night."


	2. The Theme Park

The strangeness of the situation is still sinking in. Here I am, in the middle of the night, sitting on a cold, metal folding chair, waiting to hear an animatronic fox tell me how and where his "life" began. And I'm actually interested! At this point, my sanity remains questionable.

Foxy clears his throat as best he can, it's a metallic sound that sends a chill up my spine. "I was built in a workshop. I can only assume that the folks that made me drew up a design, and then built my metal skeleton, and then some people put the fur and my eyes on. A lot different from the way you humans are build, I'd wager."

I am almost tempted to tell Foxy about the birds and the bees, but I fear he either wouldn't understand or it would offend him, and the last thing I want to do is tick off the creepy fox. I simply shake my head.

"I bet you're wonderin' if that's where me buddies up on the big stage came from. Well, the answer to that is no. The two brothers who founded this place built the others themselves, and then a few years later, I got bought from another place. That's why me fur is different and I'm not a big, showy singer like them, I'm a bloodthirsty pirate instead. All because of where I came from, a theme park.

"It wasn't a high class place, nothin' fancy. Just a small place for kiddies and grownups to spend some time together. I wasn't alone back then, I had a pirate crew. There was a shark named Sharie, who was a bit of a dope if I remember correctly. And then there was Benson, who was some sort of bear, didn't look much like Freddy. He was white and furrier."

"Like a polar bear?"

"Aye. That was probably what he was supposed to be. It wasn't just the three of us, there were many more scattered along the ride."

"What was the ride like, Foxy?"

"Oh, I never saw much outside of the area they put me. I remember standing there, not being able to get up and move at all, not even having any knowledge of being able to do such a thing. Sometimes I'd wonder what my feet were for.

"I do remember seeing boats go by real slowly in a little fake river, people would stare at us as they drifted by. A few times, I remember the ride breakin' down. They weren't supposed to, but when kids were on the ride by themselves, they'd come up and mess with us, and there was nothin' we could do about it. They'd pull out me teeth and pull down me pants. T'was ridiculous. Eventually, the management decided to replace my missing teeth with fake gold ones for more of a pirate feel, and replace my cloth pants with a set that were painted onto my bottom half, rather than just fabric."

I stifled a laugh, then asked him to continue.

"It was a livin'. Nothing too exciting about standing there in one place and singin' the same music over and over without any breaks. No one to interact with, nothin' to do except sing. It was mighty boring. I used to turn to look at me friends every now and then after the park was closed, and they'd turn to look at me, but that was all we could do. We were stuck like that, for what seemed like forever.

"I was fallin' apart as the years dragged on. The maintenance workers at the park weren't as bad as they were at the pizza place, but I never got fixed when me internal parts broke, just got my fur cleaned and my eyes and teeth polished. In the last days of the park, I was a wreck. It was like the owners knew the end was comin'. Sharie had lost an eye, and her skin was stained and falling off. Benson had fallen over a few times, didn't hurt nobody, because we were so far away from the boats, but it hurt me to see my friend being taken care of so poorly. A little while later though, it went from bad to worse."

I thought back for a moment, trying to remember any local theme parks in the area. The only ones I could think of were all long gone, the city had fallen into decay in the 80s, and then after that the tourists stopped coming by, leaving the only parks in town as sort of weekend destinations for locals, and that's no way to keep a theme park in business. It had probably been one of those unfortunate parks.

"Foxy, might I ask why the park closed down?"

Foxy raised up his hook and swung it around, "Aye! I'm getting' to that lad, don't rush this old fox."

I gulped and squirmed in my seat a little. Thanks for the reminder that you're a dangerous psychopathic robot, Foxy.

"Anyway, the reason the park closed wasn't the bad condition of me and my friends. It was some sort of reason other than that, probably money or somethin'. But there was something that happened that made the park unlikely to stay in business regardless of whether or not they were low on booty.

"One night, we had just been recovering from a particularly stressful day. Benson had fallen over at least twice, and Sharie was barely moving. I had always been a distance away from them. The stage was set up so that I was up on a fake little island with a treasure chest and a palm tree. Sharie and Benson were standing a bit further back, with Sharie hanging onto a rope coming off of a big, fake pirate ship and Benson wading in the water a few feet away from me. Ah, those were the days. When I had a hat, and a nice coat... I looked like a proper pirate back then, Danny!

"But of course, like all good things, the good old days were soon to end. That night, changed everything. The ride had broken down yet again. The lights went down and the music stopped. We ceased our repetitive swaying and jaw snapping and basically went limp. That night, there were a bunch of kids on the ride. Kids get scared in the dark, as you probably know. A few of those kids were older than the others, probably in their teens. As luck would have it, one of the kids had a brought a pack of matches with him, probably to light up a cigarette or somethin'. It was as dark as a stormy sea in that room, I'll tell ya'.

"Back in those days, safety standards weren't as strict. There were no emergency exits clearly marked on the ride, you had to look for em' in order to find em'. I suppose that's what was goin' on in that young man's mind when he lit that match. That he was gonna' help all the kids and his friends out by finding the exit. Of course, it mighta' been something more sinister, but no one will ever know now."

My blood suddenly ran cold as ice. I had heard about things like this happening before, kids wandering through a pitch black haunted house, one of them has the bright idea to light up a match or a lighter, bumps into something flammable, and sets the place on fire. It's happened before, mainly in haunted houses without proper safety guidelines (like no sprinkler system or smoke detectors) and judging by Foxy's description of the place, it was no exception.

I did not want to have him snap at me again, that was genuinely frightening, but he had gone very silent. His head was now jerked down to one side, and his eyes were dimming again.

I was afraid of Foxy, but I had to hear the rest of his story, even if I already could tell how it was going to end. I clapped my hands loudly, "Foxy! Wake up! It's not time to power down yet, it's only," I glanced up at the clock, wow! "3:32. Come on, wake up Foxy."

The animatronic jerked his head up and brightened his eyes again. He made a deep, groaning sound and clanged his hook on his robotic hand, before continuing his story, "Sorry lad, it's just, some things never leave your memory, no matter how deep ye try to bury em'.

"Now then, he lit the match, and got out of the boat. Everything was going great, except matches don't light up too much, even in the dark. Guess he got distracted, or he just forgot to look down, but he tripped on a wooden fish decoration. Ironically, the match landed in the waves where Benson was standing, and the fire spread so fast that the whole room lit up as soon as the thing touched the ground. Benson was engulfed in the flames, and it just kept spreading and spreading. Pretty soon Sharie was caught up in the blaze, too. I could hear the kids screaming, and I saw their skin falling off and turning into black leather. It was horrible, still the worst thing I'd ever seen.

"The fire barely licked me, it was mostly the smoke that damaged me. Sharie and Benson were completely destroyed, save for their metal skeletons. Neither of them even remotely resembled what they were supposed to be anymore. Same thing for the kids, but their skeletons weren't showing, it was just that their skin was now black. First they got rid of the bodies, then they got rid of us. The whole building came down, as well as the theme park. I heard that it was about 14 or so people that died because of that. Mainly smoke inhalation, but those nasty, gnarled bodies is still ingrained in my memory. Terrifying beyond belief, that was.

"After the park closed, the owners decided to sell off their remaining assets, including me. My hat and coat got burned so badly during the fire that they had to be destroyed. I was left with just a hook for an hand, an eyepatch, and my painted on pants. Eventually, I did end up finding a buyer, the two fellas who founded this place, Freddy Fazbear's Pizza."


End file.
